The traditional Passenger Service Units (PSUs) for transport category commercial aircraft are typically a one-piece unit that integrally accommodates multiple service functions for passenger comfort and/or safety, such as air flow, reading lights, crew assistance call buttons, crew messages and concealed oxygen delivery masks. Usually the conventional PSU will located overhead in such a manner that passengers seated side-by-side in the same row will need to share PSU controls associate with their particular seat. Such a sharing arrangement can present uncomfortable situations during use, for example, by a passenger's forearm and/or elbow inadvertently striking an adjacent passenger's head or at least invading the adjacent passenger's personal space when reaching to operate the PSU controls.
Conventional PSUs also do not have the passenger-operated controls (e.g., individual reading lights and air flow nozzles) positioned at an optimal location for each seat in a row. That is, since the conventional once piece PSUs are oriented along the aircraft's longitudinal axis, they must be positioned such that all passengers seated in a row (i.e., seated side-by-side along an axis transverse to the aircraft's longitudinal axis), they necessarily must be located overhead so as to be accessible by all passengers in that row. This means that a conventional PSU must be located overhead in such a manner that it is capable of servicing all passengers in the row, which in turn dictates that the PSU cannot be accessed comfortably by all such passengers (i.e., causing some of the passengers to reach across another passenger when it is necessary to operate the PSU functions). In addition, it is a common occurance that the reading light and/or air flow may encounter interference or obstruction from an immediately adjacent passenger.
The conventional one-piece PSUs are also inflexible as to cabin arrangement options that may be available to the interior design. For example, the conventional one-piece PSU must be oriented along a common longitudinal axis and thus cannot be positioned along another longitudinal axis in order to accommodate passenger seats in a different side-by-side coordinate relationship.
One proposal in the art is provided by US Patent Application Publication 2012/0012707 (the entire content of which is expressly incorporated hereinto by reference) which suggests that passenger supply functions be integrated in a storage compartment module that may be automatically hooked up to the supply system of the aircraft during mechanical installation of the module on a load-bearing structure of the cabin.
Further improvements and solutions to the problems noted previously are however needed. Therefore, what has been needed in this art are PSUs that have installation flexibility so as to provide optimum location of passenger service functions to minimize or substantially eliminate the problems associated with conventional one-piece PSUs. It is towards fulfilling such a need that the embodiments of the present invention are directed.